The present application claims priority to Japanese Application No. P11-137452 filed May 18, 1999 which application is incorporated herein by reference to the extent permitted by law.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a numerical control data creating device and a numerical control data creating method for creating numerical control data to control a part mounting machine for feeding a part and mounting the part on a board, and particularly to numerical control data creating device and method which are suitable for constructing numerical control data for a numerical control device for controlling the driving of an electrical part mounting machine and a mounting line.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In an electrical part mounting machine (hereinafter referred to as a part mounting machine), the mounting operation of an electrical part onto a wiring board is controlled by an NC device which operates according to an NC program created in advance by a numerical control (hereinafter referred to as NC) data creating device.
Therefore, when plural electrical parts are mounted on a wiring board by using plural part mounting machines, NC programs are created for respective part mounting machines in consideration of which part mounting machines should be combined and used as a mounting line.
In the conventional NC data creating device, the mount position of an electrical part is indicated from CAD (Computer Aided Design) data when a wiring board is designed, NC data comprising information indicating which part supply cassette of a part mounting machine the electrical part should be supplied to, information indicating the absorbing order of attaching the electrical part thus supplied to the nozzle of the part mounting machine under suction, and information indicating the order of mounting the electrical part thus attached onto a wiring board, and an NC program is created on the basis of these NC data.
Further, a part table, etc. are created from the CAD data, the types and number of electrical parts of the whole system are grasped, and it is considered by a worker which electrical part should be allocated to each part supply cassette and which part mounting machine should be used for mounting from a desired nozzle, thereby separately considering the types, number, arrangement, etc. of part mounting machines constituting a mounting line.
However, if NC data as described above are created every time an electrical part is mounted on each wiring board, there is a disadvantage that it takes very long time to obtain NC data for part mounting. Further, if the NC data for mounting are created on the basis of only wiring board design data, there is a disadvantage that an improvement to operate a part mounting machine efficiently is dependent on the experience of the creator thereof, and thus the operation rate of the part mounting machine may be lowered. Still further, even when the types, number and arrangement of part mounting machines constituting a mount line are determined on the basis of production number, part type number, part number, etc. of a wiring board, it is dependent on the experience of the worker. Therefore, there is a disadvantage that dispersion occurs in production cost and quality.
The present invention has been implemented from the foregoing situation, and has an object to provide an NC data creating device and an NC data creating method which can shorten the creating time of the NC data of the part mounting machine, enhance the quality of NC data, and enhance the operation rate of the part mounting machine.
In order to attain the above object, according to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a numerical control data creating device for creating numerical control data to control a part mounting machine for feeding a part and mounting the part on a board, characterized by comprising: data input portion for separating part data of the part to be mounted on the basis of design information of the board input and mount coordinate data indicating the mount position of the part and storing a producing time of the board input; a part data storage portion for storing the part data; a coordinate data storage portion for storing the mount coordinate data; a feeding means characteristic management portion for creating and managing feeding means characteristic data indicating the relationship between the part and the part feeding means on the basis of the part data; a recognizing method managing portion for creating and managing recognizing method data indicating the relationship between the part and a method for recognizing the part on the basis of the part data; a mount time managing portion for creating and managing mount time data indicating a mount time required for the mounting on the board every type of the part on the basis of the part data; and numerical control data creating means for creating the numerical control data on the basis of the data owned by each storage portion and each management portion.
In order to attain the above object, according to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a numerical control data creating method for creating numerical control data to control a part mounting machine for feeding a part and mounting the part onto a board, characterized by comprising: a step of separating part data of the part to be actually mounted from design information of the board, and mount coordinate data indicating the mount position of the part; a step of creating, on the basis of the part data, feeding means characteristic data indicating the relationship between the part and part feeding means, recognizing method data indicating the relationship between the part and a method for recognizing the part, and mount time data indicating the mount time required for the mounting onto the board every part type; and a step of creating numerical control data on the basis of the respective data.
According to the present invention, the numerical control data are created on the basis of data on a part, a mounting machine, etc., and thus the data are suitable for the construction of the part mounting machine. Further, the contents of data on a part, a mounting machine, etc. contain no experience of a creator, so that the content of the numerical control data is uniform, not dependent on the creator. Therefore, the mounting work time of each part mounting machine is uniform and the operation rate of the part mounting machine is enhanced.